Ideally, everyone with an important meeting on the agenda would have ample time to prepare for it. Unfortunately, business people often hop from meetings to phone calls to client visits without much time to prepare for what’s next. If you find yourself lots of business travel, planning for meetings from hotel rooms, or putting a shine on your presentation during your morning train ride, a quality smartphone is an asset you don’t want to go without.

Research the Client

In addition to reviewing the standard information on the client your boss gave you, do some research of your own. Find out about more than just business practices and holdings; look up the client’s origin story, find out about the company’s philanthropic work, and think about how you can make an impact with these new people. The downside to traveling to meet clients is you’re stuck on planes for hours with no good way to research. Using Gogo In-Flight Wi-Fi for free with T-Mobile solves this problem, and you land with a fleshed-out idea of who you’ll be meeting.

Coordinate Information With Your Team

Image via Flickr by centrostecnológico

Using a chat and file sharing app like Slack, share meeting information with partners at your firm who will be presenting at the meeting with you. Create a cohesive team presentation without having to take time out of your busy schedules to meet beforehand in person. Chatting and file sharing apps let you share drafts of the presentation, leave comments, and securely communicate with other team members.

Prepare Your Presentation

Whether you’re going solo or copresenting with other people in your office, save yourself some time by creating your presentation on your smartphone. PowerPoint and Keynote are both good options that you can use to develop presentation materials with your smartphone, and Join.me allows you to collaborate with its mobile apps. For people traveling to and from meeting destinations in other cities, smartphone presentation-making is a must.

Email Meeting Agendas

Will you be leading part or all of the meeting? Email an agenda containing what you plan to cover a few days before the meeting happens. Create a document on your smartphone, and make a simple bulleted list. You want others to have time to come up with questions and comments before they get to the meeting. An agenda will also streamline the actual meeting. People won’t interrupt to ask questions about a point you plan to cover later, and they’ll know to save questions for specific sections within your presentation.

Edit Your Documents

You always come up with a few more ideas just hours, or even minutes, before a meeting starts. By connecting your smartphone with cloud-sharing software and using Google Docs, you can edit your meeting documents up to the last second. Your Excel sheets and Word documents are easy to access via the Google Docs smartphone app. Then you just have to connect to Google Drive from the meeting place to pull up everything you need. If you’d prefer, just share the documents with your colleagues before the meeting so they can pull them up on their own smartphone and tablet screens.

Test Video Calling

Many meetings take place across time zones, countries, and even continents. When meeting with remote team members or clients, use your phone to test whatever video calling software you’ll be using during the meeting. Set up a preliminary test run a few hours before the meeting so you can work out any glitches. If the meeting is first thing in the morning, do the test run the day before. Preparing your video technology ahead of time will prevent tech mishaps from marring the professionalism in your meeting, and it will keep the meeting time as short as possible.

Your smartphone will take you from appearing unprepared to impressing everyone in the meeting, from clients to colleagues to managers. Even if you only have 15 minutes during your morning commute, you can find out more about new clients or put the finishing touches on your presentation as you head to your day’s important meetings.

Categories: General